Google Search within results option

May 2, 2007

Is it me or has Google launched a new tool which allows you to search for things within the results of something you have already searched for. I hardly ever scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page but when I ran a “site:” function on my blog site to check how many pages were indexed, I noticed the “Search within results” option. Right next to that there was the good old language tool for the compulsory searches of japanese animation and gaming information I run on a daily bases.

Now, after actually using the tool, I realised that the tool does nothing but combine the multiple different searches together as one really big query. Read ahead if you have nothing to do, but the search tool does little that would be of help to anyone.

This is one of the most useful tools I have encountered as of yet, and if this was introduced ages ago, I would really need to hurt someone for not telling me about it (*ahem!*). Either way, you really need to try the tool out to understand how much it would help you when optimising your website for search engines. Just for the sake of it, I will outline the different things I would use the tools for.

Search through the pages of a website which has been indexed by Google.

Check if a specific page have been indexed yet

Find back links of a website from a specific website or with specific text surrounding that link

Using the tool to return results of a very targeted search

Find specific answers for uncommon problems which stem from common problems

The list could go on as the possibility for this tool is virtually endless as each person have a different need and can use this tool to benefit them in a different way. However, by far the most common possible use of this tool would be to find answers to very very specific questions as you can narrow down the results via different subsets of related questions.

Take the following for example, if I wanted to search for the answer to “How pregnant women stay fit after giving birth to twins” I can do so in the following manner.

Finding answers method 1

I can type the above (or a slightly deviated version of the above) question into Google and pray that they return something which is even slightly related. Or, I can be a keyword analyst and only type in the keywords of the above question which would actually matter, for example “pregnant women stay slim birth twins” and once again hope that someone out there has a subset if not all of the entered keywords.

Finding the answers method 2

On the contrary, I could use Google’s Search within results tool to break the above question into a two or three part question so that I can extract the most optimal results. So what I could do is to kick things of by searching for “pregnant women” then use the Search within results tool to find “Give birth to twins” within the previous results then run another search using the Search within results tool to find “stay fit” (or “stay slim” or “diet”) to ultimately yield, in theory, the most optimal and relevant results.

Now, after actually using the tool, I realised that the tool does nothing but combine the multiple different searches together as one really big query. I apologise for the confusion and I feel ashamed for even making the above post. Do excuse me though as I have had a big day today and its nearly 10pm as I type this sentence.